Peter McLaren

Peter McLaren (b. August 2, 1948) is internationally recognized as one of the leading architects of critical pedagogy worldwide. He has developed a reputation for his uncompromising political analysis influenced by a Marxist humanist philosophy and a unique literary style of expression. McLaren is currently Professor of Education, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles.

Background

Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and raised in both Toronto and Winnipeg, Manitoba, he earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature at Waterloo University in 1973 (specializing in Elizabethan drama), attended Toronto Teachers College and went on to earn a Bachelor of Education at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Education, a Masters of Education at Brock University’s College of Education, and a Ph.D. at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto (where he worked with the late Richard Courtney, a leading international authority in children's drama).

McLaren taught elementary and middle school from 1974-1979, and most of that time was spent teaching in Canada’s largest public housing complex located in Toronto’s Jane-Finch Corridor. Cries from the Corridor, McLaren's book about his teaching experiences, made the Canadian bestseller list and was one of top ten bestselling books in Canada in 1980 (MacLean's Magazine, The Toronto Star), initiating a country-wide debate on the status of inner-city schools. (Later McLaren would harshly criticize this book and go on to transform it into the highly acclaimed pedagogical text, Life in Schools).

Academic career

After earning his doctorate in 1983, he served as Special Lecturer in Education at Brock University where he specialized in inner city education and language arts.

McLaren left Canada in 1985 to teach at Miami University of Ohio's School of Education and Allied Professions where he spent eight years working with colleague Henry Giroux during a time that witnessed the birth pangs of critical pedagogy in North America. McLaren also served as Director of the Center for Education and Cultural Studies, and held the title of Renowned Scholar-in-Residence at Miami University before being recruited by the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, in 1993, a year after the riots.

Writings

McLaren is the author, co-author, editor, and co-editor of approximately forty books and monographs. Several hundred of his articles, chapters, interviews, reviews, commentaries, and columns have appeared in dozens of scholarly journals and professional magazines worldwide.

His most recent books include Rage + Hope (Peter Lang, 2006), Capitalists and Conquerors (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), Teaching Against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism (with Ramin Farahmandpur, Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), Red Seminars: Radical Excursions into Educational Theory, Cultural Politics, and Pedagogy (Hampton Press, 2005), Marxism Against Postmodernism in Educational Theory (with Dave Hill, Mike Cole, and Glenn Rikowski), Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), Revolutionary Multiculturalism: Pedagogies of Dissent for the New Millennium, (Westview Press, 1997); Counternarratives, (with Henry Giroux, Colin Lankshear and Mike Peters, Routledge, 1997), and Critical Pedagogy and Predatory Culture, (Routledge, 1995). He is also author of Life in Schools: An Introduction to Critical Pedagogy in the Foundations of Education (Allyn & Bacon) which is now in its fourth edition (2002) and preparing to go into a fifth edition.

Life in Schools has been named one of the 12 most significant writings worldwide in the field of educational theory, policy and practice by an international panel of experts assembled by the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences; other writers named by the panel include Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, and Pierre Bourdieu.

Lectures

McLaren lectures worldwide on the politics of education, and locations of his speaking engagements have included Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Germany, Cuba, Australia, Finland, England, Spain, Portugal, Venezuela, Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico, Argentina, Poland, Israel, Palestine, Malaysia, and Pakistan.

Recent developments

McLaren is the inaugural recipient of the Paulo Freire Social Justice Award presented by Chapman University, California, April 2002. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Lapland, Finland in 2004 (see http://www.ulapland.fi/home/vies/promootio2004/indeksi.htm). He also received the Amigo Honorifica de la Comunidad Universitaria de esta Institucion by La Universidad Pedagogica Nacional, Unidad 141, Guadalajara, Mexico. Four of his books have been winners of the American Education Studies Association Critics Choice Awards for outstanding books in education.

In 2005, a group of scholars and activists in Northern Mexico established La Fundacion McLaren de Pedagogía Critica to develop a knowledge of McLaren's work throughout Mexico and to promote projects in critical pedagogy and popular education. A separate institute, currently being developed in Argentina, Instituto Peter McLaren, will hold its inaugural ceremony in the Spring of 2006 in the city of Cordoba.

External links

Peter McLaren's Website

Guardian's story of a recent exposure of leftists in US campuses http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1746227,00.html

Peter McLaren's response, and reflection on accusations of being a doctrinaire Marxist professor http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/fassbinder060406.html and http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/fassbinder060406.html.

Canadian educationists | People from Toronto | 1948 births | Living people